Week 1
The first thing we were tasked to do this week, was to write a course review as our DIL task. We were given a list of questions about our favourite parts of this course so far, what we've achieved and are hoping to achieve and what we are looking to improve in the future.
The first thing we were tasked to do this week, was to write a course review as our DIL task. We were given a list of questions about our favourite parts of this course so far, what we've achieved and are hoping to achieve and what we are looking to improve in the future.
The next thing, was to get into groups and write mind-maps for our ideas or potential ideas. This was to not only make them more concrete, but also get feedback from others on them.
The Feedback I received from the others was mostly positive, they simply remarked on how morbid my ideas usually are and said I needed to figure out a more concrete theme. They also gave me good advice on how to research for it and that was very helpful.
After this I started working on research into Grimm's fairy tales and how they've been changed in their Disney adaptation, however I put that research on hold, when I realised that we needed to finish our contextual research by the end of the week.
I had already thought of two pieces of medias I wanted to research and so working on those was pretty easy and swiftly done, however I initially struggled to find a third thing to research. However with Vinnys help I was able to find a third piece of media and finish my contextual research.
Researching these topics actually was more helpful than I had initially anticipated and gave me many ideas on how to structure the idea and narrative better. I am extremely glad I conducted this research and was able to find things to research that helped me this much and I am looking forward to conducting more research to flesh out my ideas even more.
Week 2
This week I continued researching, by conducting production experimentations in Adobe Animate on the 12 principles of animation. This was to not only remind myself of what I had already learned in the past, but also learn new tips and tricks on how to create better, smoother animations. To support this I also watched some animate tutorials on YouTube, although I did not write anything formally about this on my research page. By not only looking at what the principles are, but also using animate to practice each one, I was able to properly cement some core principles into my brain and I believe this will be very useful during production. I am extremely glad I conducted this research as I very much believe it has and will benefit me immensely.
After this I also finished off my research on the Grimm's Fairy tales, which has given me a much better idea of what is viewed as inappropriate for children, and how to change things that are appropriate into something more mature. To do so, I read the original Grimm versions of three fairy tales that received Disney adaptations (as I believe a Disney adaptation is the best example of something becoming widely child friendly) and compared what happened in the two. After this I also looked up the old illustrations and compared them to the modern animations.
All of this research combined has greatly influenced and expanded my idea for this FMP, as what I had imagined before was rather vague. I knew I wanted to tell the story of the Alice in Wonderland book but in a twisted, more morbid way, and as I had created a few comic pages about it and designed some characters before hand I had a good idea of the vibe I was going for, however the exact story had remained an uncertainty. I am now much more certain of the direction and narrative I want for this FMP.
I want this FMP to tell the story of Alice, who may have grown up in a more fortunate household, but who suffered from her differences to the other children. She is not traditionally pretty and she wears more black than any other colour. She also appears almost emotionless which leaves her peers, and the adults around her as well, thinking that shes creepy, and calling her a psychopath. Unknowingly their taunts have an unfortunate effect on her young mind, as it ends up with her retreating to the fantasy world she created in her mind, where she is able to, under the guidance of the Cheshire Cat, the embodiment of her darkest thoughts, act out morbid fantasies she has so far suppressed and learn to accept her worst self. At the end of her journey, she will be fully prepared to bring those fantasies to life, although the FMP will only be telling the beginning of the story.
This vision differs mostly in that I had at first though of it as a fantastical adventure where she is actually transported to a different world and learns to adapt to living there, as she has no wish to return home, where she is constantly teased. I believe however that what I have now, allows for much more comprehensible character development in Alice, and a clearer narrative. That is why I am extremely happy I conducted all this research that allowed me to explore what I wanted from this story much better.
After this I also finished off my research on the Grimm's Fairy tales, which has given me a much better idea of what is viewed as inappropriate for children, and how to change things that are appropriate into something more mature. To do so, I read the original Grimm versions of three fairy tales that received Disney adaptations (as I believe a Disney adaptation is the best example of something becoming widely child friendly) and compared what happened in the two. After this I also looked up the old illustrations and compared them to the modern animations.
All of this research combined has greatly influenced and expanded my idea for this FMP, as what I had imagined before was rather vague. I knew I wanted to tell the story of the Alice in Wonderland book but in a twisted, more morbid way, and as I had created a few comic pages about it and designed some characters before hand I had a good idea of the vibe I was going for, however the exact story had remained an uncertainty. I am now much more certain of the direction and narrative I want for this FMP.
I want this FMP to tell the story of Alice, who may have grown up in a more fortunate household, but who suffered from her differences to the other children. She is not traditionally pretty and she wears more black than any other colour. She also appears almost emotionless which leaves her peers, and the adults around her as well, thinking that shes creepy, and calling her a psychopath. Unknowingly their taunts have an unfortunate effect on her young mind, as it ends up with her retreating to the fantasy world she created in her mind, where she is able to, under the guidance of the Cheshire Cat, the embodiment of her darkest thoughts, act out morbid fantasies she has so far suppressed and learn to accept her worst self. At the end of her journey, she will be fully prepared to bring those fantasies to life, although the FMP will only be telling the beginning of the story.
This vision differs mostly in that I had at first though of it as a fantastical adventure where she is actually transported to a different world and learns to adapt to living there, as she has no wish to return home, where she is constantly teased. I believe however that what I have now, allows for much more comprehensible character development in Alice, and a clearer narrative. That is why I am extremely happy I conducted all this research that allowed me to explore what I wanted from this story much better.
Week 3
This week we started working on drafting our Proposals and creating our PowerPoint Pecha-Kuchas. The proposal was fairly quickly written, although I did sometimes struggle elaborating enough to hit the word count. I also got some feedback from a classmate who helped me formulate my vision more understandably. It was actually really nice to write out the plot and plan for this FMP, as it helped me make sense of my vision, and also gain more confidence in the validity of the idea.
The Pecha-Kuchas on the other hand has been taking quite a while to make, as I am trying to bring across my idea and research as concise as possible, and this has required a fair amount of images, and thus Harvard references. I am about halfway through now and am hoping to be able to finish it by Monday or Tuesday of next week. Despite it taking long, however, I have enjoyed creating it as it is interesting to try to explain an idea to a group of people. I am only hoping I manage to explain it well, and it becomes clear to everyone.
Week 4
This week we continued making sure our Pecha Kucha was ready to present, as at the beginning of the week it was still planned to be presented next week. However due to the current COVID-19 Pandemic, we were also making sure we were prepared to be able to work from home. Throughout the week, whilst we were finishing up our Pecha Kuchas and updating our blogs, it became clear that we would not be returning to school next week, as it would be closing to ensure all the students could enter self-isolation.
Although this was all quite shocking, and upsetting considering it could affect our FMPs, I am very ready to work from home and continue working ass efficiently as before. I had encountered some issues that had me concerned that I would not be able to do so, like not having the necessary computing power and my graphics tablet breaking. However, after very luckily receiving a new laptop and ordering a new graphics tablet, coming next Thursday, I am once again assured I and my FMP will not be stunted by this outbreak.
For my Pecha Kucha, it took me much longer to create than I had initially thought, however I think the extra time it took has really paid off, as I believe I have created a Pecha Kucha that clearly and accurately showcases my idea and what I have and am planning to do with it.
I am overall satisfied with what I was able to complete, despite all the drama, and do believe that I am quite ready to begin Pre-production soon. However I am hoping I will be able to have sufficient non-art related Pre-production to do until Thursday, as I will not be able to do anything digitally until then. I am also hoping my package is not delayed as this could seriously hinder my workflow.
Week 5
This week was the first week we started working from home due to the current COVID-19 issue. Since I had not received a graphics tablet until Thursday of this week, I was not able to do any digital art related tasks until then, however I still believe I was able to get a lot of work done nonetheless. We began the week finishing off our Pecha Kuchas and making sure our script was written in a way that allows the Pecha Kucha to be reviewed. As I had initially written my Script using only Keywords, as I wanted to make sure I was speaking freely when presenting, I had to rewrite it before it could be reviewed, however this was done quite quickly and I was able to move on. Then I created the Schedule I would be working with during this project, which is very important to be ale to keep track of time, and so our teachers know where we should be at too.
This week we started working on drafting our Proposals and creating our PowerPoint Pecha-Kuchas. The proposal was fairly quickly written, although I did sometimes struggle elaborating enough to hit the word count. I also got some feedback from a classmate who helped me formulate my vision more understandably. It was actually really nice to write out the plot and plan for this FMP, as it helped me make sense of my vision, and also gain more confidence in the validity of the idea.
The Pecha-Kuchas on the other hand has been taking quite a while to make, as I am trying to bring across my idea and research as concise as possible, and this has required a fair amount of images, and thus Harvard references. I am about halfway through now and am hoping to be able to finish it by Monday or Tuesday of next week. Despite it taking long, however, I have enjoyed creating it as it is interesting to try to explain an idea to a group of people. I am only hoping I manage to explain it well, and it becomes clear to everyone.
Week 4
This week we continued making sure our Pecha Kucha was ready to present, as at the beginning of the week it was still planned to be presented next week. However due to the current COVID-19 Pandemic, we were also making sure we were prepared to be able to work from home. Throughout the week, whilst we were finishing up our Pecha Kuchas and updating our blogs, it became clear that we would not be returning to school next week, as it would be closing to ensure all the students could enter self-isolation.
Although this was all quite shocking, and upsetting considering it could affect our FMPs, I am very ready to work from home and continue working ass efficiently as before. I had encountered some issues that had me concerned that I would not be able to do so, like not having the necessary computing power and my graphics tablet breaking. However, after very luckily receiving a new laptop and ordering a new graphics tablet, coming next Thursday, I am once again assured I and my FMP will not be stunted by this outbreak.
For my Pecha Kucha, it took me much longer to create than I had initially thought, however I think the extra time it took has really paid off, as I believe I have created a Pecha Kucha that clearly and accurately showcases my idea and what I have and am planning to do with it.
I am overall satisfied with what I was able to complete, despite all the drama, and do believe that I am quite ready to begin Pre-production soon. However I am hoping I will be able to have sufficient non-art related Pre-production to do until Thursday, as I will not be able to do anything digitally until then. I am also hoping my package is not delayed as this could seriously hinder my workflow.
Week 5
This week was the first week we started working from home due to the current COVID-19 issue. Since I had not received a graphics tablet until Thursday of this week, I was not able to do any digital art related tasks until then, however I still believe I was able to get a lot of work done nonetheless. We began the week finishing off our Pecha Kuchas and making sure our script was written in a way that allows the Pecha Kucha to be reviewed. As I had initially written my Script using only Keywords, as I wanted to make sure I was speaking freely when presenting, I had to rewrite it before it could be reviewed, however this was done quite quickly and I was able to move on. Then I created the Schedule I would be working with during this project, which is very important to be ale to keep track of time, and so our teachers know where we should be at too.
Although I usually dread this step, it was actually very helpful as it made me realise how little time we actually do have for the project, and that I will need to be working very fast. After this I also started and finished writing a the Script for my project. Although I was very happy with what I initially created, after receiving some feedback I am even happier with it and so I am glad I took the advice I was given. Lastly I began work on my Storyboard and have almost finished it as well.
I am very happy that I am getting close to finishing pre-production, as this will allow me to work ahead of schedule, which would be very beneficial to the project. I am hoping to finish pre-production by the end of this week, by working outside of school hours.
Week 6
Over the weekend I managed to almost completely finish off my storyboard, with only a few last panels needing to be drawn. Then on Monday I finished it off completely and also began finishing my audio plan and character sheets.
I had, in my spare time, created the character sheets for my 2 favourite characters, as these were the ones I already drew for fun the most.
This meant I only had to complete the remaining 3, which were for the characters I had not drawn quite so often.
Because of this, I did not have their designs memorised as much, which meant I quite often had to look back at the design sketches in my sketchbook, however I think it helped me streamline the designs to something I could more easily draw, as in some cases, the forgotten details were not important.
Having completed this, I was ready to move on to pre-production, the first task being the animatic. The animatic was quite tedious to create, as it first required me to individually crop each of the 107 panels, and then I also had to place them all into the timeline and set their duration accordingly. As I also figured I might as well add in the sound effects too, I then found and downloaded the ones I could online, and inserted them. This whole process took quite a while, however I was determined to finish it that day, and so I stayed up late and did.
Before I could start on animation though, I still needed the ADR for the project and so I went on a video call with Ella and Faz to get this done. Although I am very grateful they provided the necessary voices for me, to ensure diversity in the characters, being stuck in self-isolation made recording very hard. As we all had to record it ourselves, with whatever we had available, and we each had different things available, the sound quality differs quite greatly between us 3. And arranging a video call where all 3 of us would be available and able to record was difficult. What I had hoped would be done over the weekend, has ended up taking longer than I had anticipated, delaying me.
Overall however, I believe I am working at a great pace and am quite satisfied with what I have achieved so far. I look forward to continuing my work, and am hopeful for the outcome.
Week 7&8 (Easter Holiday)
Despite being on holiday, I am determined to continue working and get ahead, as I believe I will need the extra time to finish my project. I was finally able to finish all the audio and spent both Monday and Tuesday editing them. I had not anticipated the editing taking so long, and so I felt quite stressed by it. I also unfortunately had no internet all of Tuesday which meant that I could not access part of my recordings to edit them that day. However I finished them all Wednesday morning and was finally ready to start animating.
The first scene was so far probably the hardest to animate and shortly discouraged me from animating. I needed text to be moving into each other in the background and had not realised I could not have 2 symbols tweening in different directions on one layer. Although it makes sense to me now, I was confused for quite along time and could not figure out why it wasn't working. As soon as I did though, I was quickly done with it and was able to put it in the animatic. When I played it back with the sound effects in the background, I was greatly disappointed as it didn't look as good as I imagined it too and something seemed off. I couldn't put my finger on what it was, and continued animating, but I was starting to get worried about how my animation would turn out. However, I had asked my Dad if he could record some music for my animation for me, and he did so, as well as some sound effects. One of them was a ticking noise he created, that was much faster than the one I already had and had imagined. At first I didn't think I would need it, but I became curious and tried it out in place of the other. Now, somehow, it seemed to all come together much better and I was many times happier with the result. And after adding in some of the background ADR I had edited, I was beginning to be really happy with what I was creating.
The next issue I encountered, however, was that the duration I set for the storyboard panels in the animatic, didn't seem to match up with the animations I was making, despite me trying to set them exactly the same. It took me quite a bit of searching in both Animate, Premiere and Google, I finally realised that My Animate project files had accidentally defaulted to 30fps, which differed to the 25fps of Premiere. After adjusting this, I finally managed to get the animations to match and have had no troubles since.
Lip syncing is required quite early on in the animation, and as I had had no practice with this in the past (My previous project featuring mouthless characters), I decided to do some research on it. I of course knew the basics of how to do it, but I also knew I hadn't done a very good job when I had tried it and so I wanted to make sure I was fully prepared. The short video I watched was enough for me to grasp it better and when I tried I was positively surprised as I feel I did quite a good job.
Despite being momentarily discouraged, I am quite confident with this project and how it will turn out in the end. I am looking forward to continue animating each scene and see it all come together and hope it ends up looking like how I imagine it.
Week 9
After completing a fair amount of work over the holidays, I had reached a particularly complicated scene just in time fro the beginning of lessons. The reason this one is so complicated, is that it is an action with poses that I not only have I never drawn before and would need references for, but that are quite hard to get right themselves. This meant I would need to draw sketches of the animation before hand, which had mostly not been necessary with the very simple animations so far. Due to this, and the fact that it would also need a busy background, I knew it would take me some time.
First I drew a very basic skeleton sketch of what the basic action would be. I looked up some random GIF's on google to get a better idea of how it would need to move, but ultimately drew it quite freely using what I had gathered. Considering I had never drawn any of these poses before, let alone animated this action, I was quite proud of myself for getting it as good as I did and drawing it mostly without reference.
Then to finish it all off, I drew in the background and the scene was finished.
It took me about 3 days to create this scene, which frustrates me quite a bit. I was struggling to focus and I feel I wasted a lot of time on this scene, However I am hoping to be able to speed up my workflow after having completed this.
I am very happy with how it turned out, it gave me a bit more confidence in my ability to draw more complicated poses, although I can definitely see room for improvement on the anatomy. The proportions are also not very accurate as she is a lot taller and lankier in this scene than the rest of the animation, (since she is a child) however I decided I needed to move on to get enough work done, and I am nonetheless proud of it.
Whilst this has made me worry I will not be able to finish on time, especially once I get to the more intense parts of the animation, I am doing my best to remain confident that I will complete it.
Week 10
This week I continued animating, as usual. As I am now at a stage where I have worked out most kinks, and am continuing on animating every week, there isn't much to write about work-wise. However, being cooped up at home all day, and responsible for my won workflow, has started to take its toll. I am gradually struggling more and more to keep my motivation up, and as there a more distractions from work at home, I often struggle to regain it, after I've been interrupted by something.
To counteract this, I have been trying to find new spaces in my home to work in, volunteer to be the one to go grocery shopping, so as to spend more time outside, and take breaks when I'm truly struggling, to refocus.
By the end of this week, I have finally finished 2 scenes with some more intense animation, which was especially hard to keep focus on. I am confident that after a good weekend break I will be able to work much better and much faster on the next, simpler scenes, and get a lot more done.
I am unsure whether or not I will be able to finish the entire animation, or how much I will be able to get done, as some intense scenes take a while to animate, but the simpler scenes are animated quite fast, however I am determined to do my best and simply work to get as much done as possible, especially since I am quite proud of how it is turning out, even if it is not to the highest standard.
Week 11
This week I worked on the transformation scene of the Cheshire cat body parts into the Cheshire cat himself. This scene didn't require any complicated animations, however I did use symbols and tweens to create the fading effect, and created my own ease to make it more dramatic. I also used the movie clip symbols to create an embedded animation for the tail, so that I could then use tweens to have it fade with the body. I am working on the second (and longest) dialogue sequence of the animation and once that is finished I will have reached the halfway point in my animation.
However something I have started to worry about more is the audio quality of the ADR.
After editing them to the best of abilities I started adding them in to the animatic with every scene I have finished animating and have come to realise, not only how big the difference between, not only recordings from different people, but recordings made by me, is. Despite being recorded with the same equipment and on the same day, a lot of my recordings sound drastically different to each other, which means I will likely need to re-edit them when I'm done.
Week 12
Last week I had planned to finish the entire Cheshire Cat dialogue sequence however unfortunately this is taking longer than expected. Whilst the scenes are very simple and easy to create, they all require lip syncing which takes a bit of time.
I am very happy that I am getting close to finishing pre-production, as this will allow me to work ahead of schedule, which would be very beneficial to the project. I am hoping to finish pre-production by the end of this week, by working outside of school hours.
Week 6
Over the weekend I managed to almost completely finish off my storyboard, with only a few last panels needing to be drawn. Then on Monday I finished it off completely and also began finishing my audio plan and character sheets.
I had, in my spare time, created the character sheets for my 2 favourite characters, as these were the ones I already drew for fun the most.
This meant I only had to complete the remaining 3, which were for the characters I had not drawn quite so often.
Because of this, I did not have their designs memorised as much, which meant I quite often had to look back at the design sketches in my sketchbook, however I think it helped me streamline the designs to something I could more easily draw, as in some cases, the forgotten details were not important.
Having completed this, I was ready to move on to pre-production, the first task being the animatic. The animatic was quite tedious to create, as it first required me to individually crop each of the 107 panels, and then I also had to place them all into the timeline and set their duration accordingly. As I also figured I might as well add in the sound effects too, I then found and downloaded the ones I could online, and inserted them. This whole process took quite a while, however I was determined to finish it that day, and so I stayed up late and did.
Before I could start on animation though, I still needed the ADR for the project and so I went on a video call with Ella and Faz to get this done. Although I am very grateful they provided the necessary voices for me, to ensure diversity in the characters, being stuck in self-isolation made recording very hard. As we all had to record it ourselves, with whatever we had available, and we each had different things available, the sound quality differs quite greatly between us 3. And arranging a video call where all 3 of us would be available and able to record was difficult. What I had hoped would be done over the weekend, has ended up taking longer than I had anticipated, delaying me.
Overall however, I believe I am working at a great pace and am quite satisfied with what I have achieved so far. I look forward to continuing my work, and am hopeful for the outcome.
Week 7&8 (Easter Holiday)
Despite being on holiday, I am determined to continue working and get ahead, as I believe I will need the extra time to finish my project. I was finally able to finish all the audio and spent both Monday and Tuesday editing them. I had not anticipated the editing taking so long, and so I felt quite stressed by it. I also unfortunately had no internet all of Tuesday which meant that I could not access part of my recordings to edit them that day. However I finished them all Wednesday morning and was finally ready to start animating.
The first scene was so far probably the hardest to animate and shortly discouraged me from animating. I needed text to be moving into each other in the background and had not realised I could not have 2 symbols tweening in different directions on one layer. Although it makes sense to me now, I was confused for quite along time and could not figure out why it wasn't working. As soon as I did though, I was quickly done with it and was able to put it in the animatic. When I played it back with the sound effects in the background, I was greatly disappointed as it didn't look as good as I imagined it too and something seemed off. I couldn't put my finger on what it was, and continued animating, but I was starting to get worried about how my animation would turn out. However, I had asked my Dad if he could record some music for my animation for me, and he did so, as well as some sound effects. One of them was a ticking noise he created, that was much faster than the one I already had and had imagined. At first I didn't think I would need it, but I became curious and tried it out in place of the other. Now, somehow, it seemed to all come together much better and I was many times happier with the result. And after adding in some of the background ADR I had edited, I was beginning to be really happy with what I was creating.
The next issue I encountered, however, was that the duration I set for the storyboard panels in the animatic, didn't seem to match up with the animations I was making, despite me trying to set them exactly the same. It took me quite a bit of searching in both Animate, Premiere and Google, I finally realised that My Animate project files had accidentally defaulted to 30fps, which differed to the 25fps of Premiere. After adjusting this, I finally managed to get the animations to match and have had no troubles since.
Lip syncing is required quite early on in the animation, and as I had had no practice with this in the past (My previous project featuring mouthless characters), I decided to do some research on it. I of course knew the basics of how to do it, but I also knew I hadn't done a very good job when I had tried it and so I wanted to make sure I was fully prepared. The short video I watched was enough for me to grasp it better and when I tried I was positively surprised as I feel I did quite a good job.
Despite being momentarily discouraged, I am quite confident with this project and how it will turn out in the end. I am looking forward to continue animating each scene and see it all come together and hope it ends up looking like how I imagine it.
Week 9
After completing a fair amount of work over the holidays, I had reached a particularly complicated scene just in time fro the beginning of lessons. The reason this one is so complicated, is that it is an action with poses that I not only have I never drawn before and would need references for, but that are quite hard to get right themselves. This meant I would need to draw sketches of the animation before hand, which had mostly not been necessary with the very simple animations so far. Due to this, and the fact that it would also need a busy background, I knew it would take me some time.
I drew the more detailed sketch over that, which is what would help me during the line art pass. Here I not only needed to flesh out the sketch, but also animate how the clothing would move during the action.
Then I finished up the animation with the line art, where I also lastly animated the hair. Since I knew the background would have a lot of black in it, I made sure to add a white border around it, which caused me quite some trouble, since I had animated each body part on a separate layer
Then to finish it all off, I drew in the background and the scene was finished.
It took me about 3 days to create this scene, which frustrates me quite a bit. I was struggling to focus and I feel I wasted a lot of time on this scene, However I am hoping to be able to speed up my workflow after having completed this.
I am very happy with how it turned out, it gave me a bit more confidence in my ability to draw more complicated poses, although I can definitely see room for improvement on the anatomy. The proportions are also not very accurate as she is a lot taller and lankier in this scene than the rest of the animation, (since she is a child) however I decided I needed to move on to get enough work done, and I am nonetheless proud of it.
Whilst this has made me worry I will not be able to finish on time, especially once I get to the more intense parts of the animation, I am doing my best to remain confident that I will complete it.
Week 10
This week I continued animating, as usual. As I am now at a stage where I have worked out most kinks, and am continuing on animating every week, there isn't much to write about work-wise. However, being cooped up at home all day, and responsible for my won workflow, has started to take its toll. I am gradually struggling more and more to keep my motivation up, and as there a more distractions from work at home, I often struggle to regain it, after I've been interrupted by something.
To counteract this, I have been trying to find new spaces in my home to work in, volunteer to be the one to go grocery shopping, so as to spend more time outside, and take breaks when I'm truly struggling, to refocus.
By the end of this week, I have finally finished 2 scenes with some more intense animation, which was especially hard to keep focus on. I am confident that after a good weekend break I will be able to work much better and much faster on the next, simpler scenes, and get a lot more done.
I am unsure whether or not I will be able to finish the entire animation, or how much I will be able to get done, as some intense scenes take a while to animate, but the simpler scenes are animated quite fast, however I am determined to do my best and simply work to get as much done as possible, especially since I am quite proud of how it is turning out, even if it is not to the highest standard.
Week 11
This week I worked on the transformation scene of the Cheshire cat body parts into the Cheshire cat himself. This scene didn't require any complicated animations, however I did use symbols and tweens to create the fading effect, and created my own ease to make it more dramatic. I also used the movie clip symbols to create an embedded animation for the tail, so that I could then use tweens to have it fade with the body. I am working on the second (and longest) dialogue sequence of the animation and once that is finished I will have reached the halfway point in my animation.
However something I have started to worry about more is the audio quality of the ADR.
After editing them to the best of abilities I started adding them in to the animatic with every scene I have finished animating and have come to realise, not only how big the difference between, not only recordings from different people, but recordings made by me, is. Despite being recorded with the same equipment and on the same day, a lot of my recordings sound drastically different to each other, which means I will likely need to re-edit them when I'm done.
Week 12
Last week I had planned to finish the entire Cheshire Cat dialogue sequence however unfortunately this is taking longer than expected. Whilst the scenes are very simple and easy to create, they all require lip syncing which takes a bit of time.
Throughout the week, I really struggled to keep my focus on my work, and so when we were recommended to take part in the BBC Life drawing Live event, I took the opportunity for a change of pace. Unfortunately I did not see the message until the Live stream was already over, however I was able to watch it offline afterwards. As it was the end of the week by then, and we were doing a Video call later that day, that interrupted me from the drawing, I only managed to do 2 of the drawings after the warm-up. However, I am finding myself to be able to focus on this type of work a lot better at the moment, and so I am looking forward to finishing the rest.
The first drawing I did, which we worked 6 minutes on, is the one I am proudest of so far. I think I managed to get the proportions quite accurate and was able to add a lot of detail in a short time. In the second drawing I drew his leg too short and his nose too big, however I think it still turned out quite well.
Week 13
This week is when the deadline of the project originally would have been, however due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, this has been pushed up to next week. Since I have been really struggling to get work done, I am very grateful for this, however I will still not be able to finish it entirely.
I began the week by finishing off the rest of the Life drawings from last week and came to some pretty good results.
In the first drawing the goal was to focus on stark lighting with extremely dark shadows, and although I still think I need some more practice at that. I am quite proud of it. I had never tried to do shading that way and think it turned out quite cool. I also liked the proportions and anatomy of the pose in this drawing, however the way I drew the shading makes the pose hard to make out which is probably the biggest flaw in this drawing. However considering I was working without a warm up this time, I think I did a good job.
The second drawing I made, was of a pretty complicated pose of a woman with a cello. This is probably my least favourite of the drawings I made as I think I really messed up the proportions, the foreshortening, and the pose. However knowing how difficult this one was, I am not beating myself up too much about it and it was good practice nonetheless.
In the last drawing my pencil ran out of lead, and so I switched to charcoal as the drawings were intended to be drawn in, but I had avoided doing. I ended up really regretting not using charcoal from the beginning as I really enjoyed using this medium and found it lent itself to the life drawing really well. This drawing ended up being my favourite, and sparked an interest in charcoal life drawings in me.
Despite the fact that I will not be able to finish my project by the deadline, I am quite happy with my progress. I've animated 40 scenes so far which adds up to around 3 minutes of animation, and although that is less than half of my entire project, it is still quite a substantial amount of work and will hopefully help me achieve the grade I am aiming for.
In the remaining days I will be making sure that what I have is as good as possible.